Creativity-psychosis linkage via reduced white matter /myelination

I have been following, and am passionate about, the positive psychology movement for quite some time, but was surprised to discover that there was something called positive neuroscience also in place. I recently came across this new scientist article about the research paper of Rex Jung et al and was pleased to discover that Jung was working on the frontier of applying latest in neuroscience research to Positive brain states and substrates like that involved in creativity.

The article is in PLOSOne, an open access journal and is lucidly written , so you should go and read it now. I’ll anyway like to summarize their study results. First a bit of background about creativity psychopathology linkage.

Some research reports positive correlations between various definitions of creativity and a diagnosis of psychopathology [1], [2], [3], [4]. Other studies report that psychopathology is rarely, if ever, associated with creative insight, capacity, or productivity [5]. When artists are studied more carefully, certain personality characteristics appear to reside upon a continuum of both normal behavior and psychopathology. For example, creative expression in the visual arts and poetry has been linked with the overlapping personality traits of schizotypy and Openness to Experience (Openness), and particularly to self-reports of “unusual experiences” and “unconventional nonconformity”, but not the “introvertive anhedonia” characteristic of schizophrenia [6].

This is inline with what we have been covering at mouse trap regarding association of creativity with the psychotic spectrum especially the creativity that is artistic or revolutionary in nature rather than scientific and methodical in nature. This is how the authors distinguish between types of creativity inline with my views that one type of creativity is autistic (cognitive) in nature while the other is psychotic (emotional) and these are on a continuum.

First, there does not exist one “creativity”; rather, this construct is hypothesized to reside upon a continuum between cognitive (i.e., scientific) and emotional (i.e., artistic) behavioral domains [41], [42]. Thus, when comparing scientists and artists directly, researchers have found lower lifetime rates of psychopathology for: 1) scientists compared to artists, 2) natural scientists compared to social scientists, 3) nonfiction writers compared to fiction writers and poets, and 4) formal artists compared to “expressive” artists [3], [4], [43]. These findings have led researchers to hypothesize a hierarchical structure of creativity across disciplines [42], which echoes the notions of “paradigmatic” (i.e., a fundamental model of events) versus “revolutionary” (i.e., rejection of doctrines) approaches as applied to the sciences [44]. The benefits of working within the lines of a given field appear to be lower levels of psychopathology; alternately, individuals with lower levels of psychopathology may be attracted to such endeavors. Similarly, there is increasing evidence that the cost of “revolutionary” approaches to creative endeavors, whether it is in the arts or sciences, may be associated with increased levels of psychopathology although, again, causative links are weak at best.

So that fits in with broader creativity/ psychopathology linkage, but to get back to the current study the authors had already established earlier that performance on Divergent Thinking (DT) (a measure of creativity) “exhibited significant inverse relationships with both cortical thickness in frontal lobe regions and metabolite concentration of N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) in the anterior cingulate cortex in normal young subjects “. Thus, some theoretical relationship between creativity and underlying brain circuitry in the frontal reagion was available a priori. Also, research by other researchers has already established that ” Both schizophrenic and bipolar patients have been shown to have reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in the anterior thalamic radiation [12], [13] and uncinate fasciculus [14] within frontal brain regions. Similarly, reduced FA was observed within the uncinate fasciculus of a cohort with schizotypal personality disorder, providing strong support for the hypothesis that similar neural phenotypes may not result in full-blown clinical symptoms [15]. Finally, in normal subjects, the Neuroregulin-1 (NRG1) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s) SNP8NRG243177 and SNP8NRG221533 were found to predict lower FA in the left anterior thalamic radiation [16]. As NRG1 has been found to predict higher risk of schizophrenia [17], [18] and bipolar disorder [19], and is linked with axonal myelination and migration [20], these authors hypothesize a mechanistic link between NRG1 within the anterior thalamic radiation and risk for psychotic disorders [16].”

Thus, from the above it is easy to see that there should be a inverse relationship between Fractional Anisotropy (a construct related to myelination of axons) in the frontal regions and creativity if one assumes that creativity and psychopathology are related and are on one end of a continuum. And this inverse relationship between creativity and FA is exactly what they found:

Our results suggest a convergence between a cognitive measure of divergent thinking, a personality measure of Openness, and a white matter integrity measure within the inferior frontal lobes. We found that normal young subjects with lower levels of FA within predominantly left inferior frontal white matter (i.e., regions overlapping the uncinate fasciculus and anterior thalamic radiation) scored higher on the CCI; similarly subjects with lower levels of FA within the right frontal white matter (i.e., regions overlapping the uncinate fasciculus and anterior thalamic radiation) scored higher on self-reported measures of Openness. These two regions of white matter overlap with those reported by other researchers who found lower FA in both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [13], [14], [30].

They could also nail the reduced FA to reduced myelination as radial diffusion was affected more than axial diffusion. As reduced myelination has been shown as a diatheisis for psychosis, this fits in with previous research linking risk factors common to psychosis and creativity.

Whereas more neural resources are often associated with higher intellectual capacity in a parieto-frontal network of brain regions [39], studies in DT appear to suggest that less is often better in a different network of brain regions, particularly fronto-cingulate-subcortical networks linked via white matter loops [40].

One can speculate that frontal region, more concerned with executive control , when with reduced activity or functional connectivity , may not inhibit the other brain regions that much, and may thus lead to flowering of inherent creativity and cross-talk amongst different brain regions. On the other hand too much white matter/ gray matter in this region may lead to too much control and leave little room for flexibility and creativity.

It is interesting to note that enhanced FA is associated with clinical disorder of Williams syndrome, which is associated with Autism; on the other end of continuum, reduced FA in particular brain region is associated with psychosis proneness, thus providing another convergent linkage of autism and psychosis as opposites.

This entry was posted by sandygautam on April 4, 2010 at 8:53 PM, and is filed under creativity, psychosis. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I’m probably just having a dumb moment, and also I’m not as well read in psychology so I get a little lost in all the terminology in general. Would you possibly be able to summarize the article in simplest possible terms?

tl;dr: Low quality myelin => creativity and increased risk of psychosis * Tensor imaging measures water diffusion through cellular compartments. * This measurement can be used to determine the quality of myelin thickness, etc., which they call fractional ansiotropy (FA). * Lower quality myelin is linked with creativity, but also with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

This is a good basic summary. A little background info that I find interesting is that myelin/white matter has been linked to a variety of intelligence factors. Prefrontal white matter is also the major difference between our brains and our ape cousins. My research is in network plasticity and connectivity and I find it interesting that our understanding of neurocognition is shifting from localization (‘blobs’) to more integrated, dynamic networks.

Someone else already summarized but the basic finding here is that reduced frontoparietal white matter (fatty insulation on connective fibers between brain areas) correlates with increased creativity. A similar pattern has been found in cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The authors suggest that it is probably a U-function, as somewhat decreasing connectivity from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain would enhance cross-modal communication and decrease inhibition. Too much of this and you end up talking to yourself on the bus.

This is crazy. I worked on mapping brains exactly the same way they did in this article when I was doing undergraduate research in the IU psych dept. I feel so at home looking at those pictures. Awesome.

philoscience and georgeavazzy have already done a good job, so I’ll juts point you to their comments. ya, the jargon can be a bit discomforting, but wherever possible I had provided Wikipedia links so that one could get a sense of what one means by Fractional anisotropy etc. A 3 line summary: 1. Creativity and psychosis are linked and have common basis in brain. (where else could any basis be for any sort of linkage:-) 2. Our neuronal axons (the wires between the neurons) are insulated by myelin; this insulation increases speed of signal conduction. Together the axons and myelins are talked about as the white matter of the brain. 3. In frontal regions of the brain, that are supposed to be involved in executive control (or involved in inhibiting other regions of brain and involved in planning etc), it is found that there is reduced white matter and specifically myelination (insulation) and this is a risk factor for psychosis as well as correlated with creativity. Thus, this is perhaps the neural substrate common to creativity-psychosis.

Question: if creativity is linked with reduced myelin, does it follow that ‘creativity’ boosting exercises will also reduce myelin? Do we need to selectively atrophy neuroanatomy to gain certain functions? Seems very counter-intuitive and points me back to a common theme in neuroplasticity: we have no clear way of qualifying ‘gains’ and ‘losses’ in the system.

I beg to differ – slightly larger brains (relative to body mass I’m sure) are slightly smarter. But my intended thought was, relating this to the fact that efficiency of neural transmission is related to intelligence.

I beg to differ – slightly larger brains (relative to body mass I’m sure) are slightly smarter. But my actual thought was, relating this to the fact that efficiency of neural transmission are related to intelligence.